Posts Tagged ‘House Drawings’

I Have Just Received The Finished Construction Version Of The Thai House Plans To Build Our Retirement House In Thailand

Yesterday, September 29th, 2010, I received a set of construction drawings from our Thai architect to allow us to move forward on the road to building our retirment home in Thailand.

The house plans consisted of a set of very detailed Thai house plans, 46 sheets in all covering, Architecture, Structural, Electrical and Sanitation works.

I was delighted with the quantity and the quality of the drawings. I will describe what I received here in the post and show one or two of them but to do justice to the house drawings I have displayed them in the Galleries Section of the website.

Or you can go directly to the Architectural Construction Drawings Gallery

Samples Of The Thai House Plans – Construction Drawings – Designed By Our Thai Architect In Bangkok

Above, a sample of one of the construction drawings. This is the architectural layout for the second floor.

Construction Drawing Our Pakchong House End Elevation 2

Above, another example of one of the construction drawings. This is the front elevation.

Construction Drawing Our Pakchong House End Elevation 1

And above is the side elevation of the drawing for our our retirement home.

Construction Drawing Our Pakchong House Section BB

Above, another sample of the Thai house plans designed by our Thai architect. this time it is a section through the house that is shown.This is the last of the Thai house plans that I am displaying in this Post. I will be uploading more of the Thai house plans to a separate web page.

How Many House Plans Do You Need To Build A house In Thailand And What Level Of Detail Is Necessary?

There is a minimum quantity and level of detail that your house plans need to satisfy in order for you to build your hosue in Thailand. The minimum level depends upon the size of the house (i.e. how many rooms) the capability of the builder and the degree of control over the detail in the finished article that you want.

For our small house to be built in Pakchong, it is only 200 m2, our Thai architect has produced a set of house plans of construction stage quality and comprising 47 sheets of drawings. Here is a summary of what the set of construction drawings comprises:-

A Thai Architect In Bangkok Is Making Our Retirement House Plans

On 14th July 2010, we gave the go-ahead to a Bangkok-based Architectural design-and-build company to proceed with producing the construction drawings for our retirement house we want to build in Pakchong, Thailand.

The company is called Kensington Company Limited and according to their Thai Builders website they have designed and built many beautiful and prestigious properties and won several awards including the Conde Nast Hottest 100 Asia Hotels Award May 2008 for designing and building “The Villa Water Orchid”.

Although I was a bit apprehensive at appointing the company from arms length i.e. from U.K. via email and not having met them in Thailand, I must say that to date I am very impressed with their service and the quality of their design work. The architect has now produced the final ground and first floor house layouts which I have now approved. Also, he has produced some very nice perspective views of the house obtained from a 3D computer model he has made.

I have posted some of these drawings on the website on the Thai Architects House Plans page at http://retiringinthailand.net/house-build-thailand-2/thai-architects-house-plans. I have some more perspective views which I’ll post there in a couple of days time and as I receive more details I’ll post those on that page also.

In addition to the high quality of the drawings, plans if you like, the architect is producing I want to mention other things that has made me very glad that we chose to proceed with the Kensington Company.

Excellent Service. I deal exclusively via email with Chris Clayton the Managing Director of the Kensington Company. Chris is always quick to respond to my emails usually within hours and always on the same day.

Further, both Chris and Yos, the Thai Architect, keep telling me that they want me to be happy and nothing is too much trouble. If I want to change something or don’t like what Yos has proposed for a particular situation, Yos will change it if I ask for it to be changed. Here for example are typical snippets from some of Chris’s email:-

“I am glad it all seems clearer. I know it can be difficult doing it thousands of miles away by e-mail. But have no worries. Yos and I will work on this design until you are happy which I think will come together fairly quickly now. Now things are clearer to all.”

“No problem at all. It’s my pleasure and also my job to help. Yos will happily make whatever changes you ask for.”

Quality Assurance. Another concern I had was that I had produced sketches of my concept for the house and knew that there were certain areas where my concept needed some development to make it work. One example is the roofs. My concept is visually pretty but as Yos pointed out for several reason is unpractical and would lead to leaks and difficulties in construction. Hence the architect’s roof solution is different from my concept and I have to accept this. At every step of the way Yos is checking my concept to make sure that what he delivers is practical and complies with the Thai building regulations and standards. This is from one of Chris’s emails discussing my concept for the roofs:-

“Dear Alan,

Thanks for all the comments and ideas.

Yos has gone over them carefully. He is happy to help you in anyway and try to come up with solutions. However he is particularly concerned with your desire for this roof design you have created. Naturally he wants you to have the home as you like it but as an architect he has to point out to you and make it clear if your choices are potentially going to cause problems to you, the home or the construction contractor. He was worried about this roof and asked me please to point it out again to you. He suggested the roof style he did because it is practical for construction and Thailand’s weather. Whereas if he does it as you want, you will have problems with leaks and practical issues to be concerned about.

He has written a explanation with drawings to try and help everyone understand what he means. He is happy to do as you ask but wants you to know it could very easily cause you problems with the house.

Look forward to your comments and resolving this issue. If you have any thoughts or ideas please forward them. Very important you the customer is happy but at the same time the home will be practical.”

And this is an extract from Yos’s messages to me:-

“Dear Alan

What we are most concerned about is the house has to be comfortable for living, be suitable for the Thai weather, and be in line with Thai construction methods and practical. So as an architect I may make comments or observations that from experience in both design and construction I feel are necessary and the best advice for you as the home owner. I hope you do not mind me doing this but I would like to explain one more time perhaps better than before so it is clear regarding the roof. I can do whatever you ask but naturally I am responsible for the design of the home and I need to make sure everything is clear, in case something asked means the house will have problems or not be practical. Here are my thoughts and comments:”

Ease of Communication. I was again concerned about the ability to communicate ideas and thoughts across the world to a Thai company in Bangkok from my home in the U.K. In fact this has turned out to be very easy because as you can see in the message from Yos above, Yos has an excellent command of the English language.

In summary, therefore, we are very happy with the way the production of the construction drawings is progressing. Although the process is far from complete, the service we have received from the Kensington Company to date gives us confidence that the final set of drawings will be perfectly acceptable.

Assuming that will be the case then we will have proven that you can commission a Thai architect in Bangkok, Thailand to design your retirement home in Thailand even if you live half way round the world and never even visit Thailand.

Having said that, the drawings are not yet complete, there is still much work to do, and only then will I be able to give a 100% recommendation of the Kensington Company.

More Information And Thai House Plan Drawings

Please make sure you visit the web page Thai Architects House Plans  periodically to check out the latest drawings and perspectives of our planned retirement house. In fact, to make sure you are alerted whenever I post new information why not join the Announcement List by entering your name and email at the top of this page? I will then send you an email whenever anything interested is posted on the website.

Get A Free Consultation For Thai House Plans – Have Your Retirement House Designed Or Built In Thailand

Chris, Managing Director of Kensington Company will be happy to meet with anyone who contacts him from this website or from my recommendation and he will provide a personal service and a free consultation. If you do contact  Kensington Company mak sure that you ask for Chris. To make is easy for you I have put a Contact Kensington Form on the website for you to use. 

Finding an Architect in Thailand to Design Your Retirement Home

I never thought it would be so difficult to find an architect in Thailand to design your retirement house and make the plans for building permission and construction.

As you may know already if you have looked around the website, my wife has bought a piece of land (1 Rai) in Pakchong on which we want to build our home to retire to in Thailand.

Early this year I made a set of house plans (in other words I designed our planned home) which you can see here: http://retiringinthailand.net/house-build-thailand-2/

Since then I have bought the land and updated the house drawings. The next step was to find an architect to take my existing house plans as a starting point and produce a set of proper drawings that can be used for:-

A) obtaining the building permit

B) obtaining quotations from builder to build the house and

C) building the house

You would not believe how difficult this is.

Of course I am living in the UK and trying to do this over the Internet. If I was in Thailand it would not be so difficult I’m sure.

I Came Very Close To Signing A Contract With A Thai Architect

Last year I found a Thai company and they gave me a budget price to build the house and a price to make the plans. (House drawings).

The price was higher than my wife was comfortable with and so I was reluctant to go ahead. But time is passing by and I want to get the drawings finished ready to start building in September after the rainy season has finished. So I sent of all the latest and updated information and received a confirmed price.

As I mentioned, the company had previously given me a budget price for building the house based on a unit rate of 15,000 to 20,000 Baht/m2. you can see all the details at The Budget Price Of Building A House In Thailand. The quote for making the house drawings was based on 7% of this construction cost estimate. Well, if you have seen the Pictures Of The House We Are Building In Thailand you will know that half of the ground floor is ‘empty’ and the other half is simply a blockwork ‘shed’. So I reckoned that the unit rate for the construction cost should be lower for the ground floor making the cost of the house – and hence the architects fees lower since they are based on a %age of the estimated construction cost.

I put this to the company offering to make the retirement house drawings for me and although at first they responded that their price was “their fixed, standard low price and could not be reduced” they eventually offered a very small discount, for which I was grateful. My wife, being Thai always asks for a discount when she goes shopping and I had to follow suit in this case, otherwise she may not have agreed to go ahead.

Anyway, I wanted to agree to the new price and and asked them to send me a payment schedule, which was duly received. I expected this to be based on progress. In other words each stage payment would reflect the amount of work completed. For example when half the work is complete I would pay 50% 0f the fees. This sounds fair to me.

But what I was offered was ‘front end loaded’ as you can see below!

This what the company proposed as a fee payment schedule to make the house plans for our Thai retirement home:-

• 1^st 50% advance after sign contract
• 2^nd 30% when propose first draft preliminary design
• 3^rd 10% when propose final draft and perspective
• 4^th 10% when complete of construction and permission drawing and submits to client

What didn’t I like about this? Well, for starters I have already produced the concept drawings so steps 1 and 2 are already finished! Even if this represents the half-way stage, I am paying 80% of the fee for 50% of the work.

The last two 10% items is where the important parts of the work are. And there is over 50% of the total work here. What incentive is there for the architect to do 50% of the work for 20% of the fee? I am very nervous that this part of the work will never be complete – at least to a good standard.

So I made another attempt at finding an alternative architect in Thailand to make our house drawings.

A List Of Thai Architects

The first thing I did was to google ‘Thai Architect’. this came up with a few individual websites and one business directory listing dozens if not a hundred Thai architects.

Here is a link to the list of Thai Architects:

http://www.bangkokcompanies.com/categories/thai_companies_p407.htm

Next I sent an email to all the architects who had a website or an email address. Here is a list of those:-

http://www.thailandarchitects.com/contact-us

http://www.archinet.co.th

bangkokcompanies@gmail.com

arch@aanda.co.th

siripongy@yahoo.com

a_seven@thaimail.com

And here is the message I sent them:-

Hello,

I am Thai living (at the moment) in U.K. I have bought some land in Pakchong and will be building a house there.

Can you please give me a price to make the house plans.

All the information is in the files you can download from

http://retiringinthailand.net/downloads

Here are the individual download links:-

http://retiringinthailand.net/downloads/Thai-House-Plan-Kanyah-Pakchong-HOUSE-100701-1.zip

http://retiringinthailand.net/downloads/Thai-House-Plan-Kanyah-Pakchong-HOUSE-100701-2.zip

http://retiringinthailand.net/downloads/Thai-House-Plan-Kanyah-Pakchong-HOUSE-100701-3.zip

Thank You
Kanyah

By the way those are real download links. You can download for free all the plans for my Thai retirement house.

The drawings are in AutoCAD 2006 and pdf format. You can also download some photos, spreadsheets and Word documents. These explain the scope of works for the architect and give a detailed specification for the house and it’s construction.

That’s all for now. I’ll be reporting if If I get any replies.

Update July 2010 – Response Received

From all those architects I contacted I only had one email by way of response. Here it is:-

—————————————————————————————————————–

Dear Kanyah,

I appreciate your interest in the designs for your home.

We looked at them and for basic design contract to supply finished architects construction drawings. Cost of construction we think would be 1.6m -2.2m baht plus vat (7%). But only the construction contractor will know this once the architects drawings are completed.

Our fee for this would be 150,000 baht plus vat (7%)

This does not include:

1. Applications of permission to build but we do supply engineers and architects information for you to use in application.

2. It does not include interior design, landscaping or travel expenses if required to visit site. (We think we can design this without going to the site if all information is provided correctly by yourself.)

Sincerely,

Name removed for Privacy

—————————————————————————————————————–

(Note I was using my wife’s name, Kanyah, as the contact)

So I sent a simple question to this Architect:-

—————————————————————————————————————–

Update August 2010 – I Have Appointed A Thai Architect

After that I decided to go with the Thai company who gave me a budget price for my house and a design fee proposal I described above.

And I’m now glad I did because I am delighted with their service and the work they do. Highly recommended.

Here are some links to the work they have done and what I have said about the way they work:-

Thai Architects House Plans

Comments On Thai Architects Preliminary House Design

More Comments On Thai Architects Preliminary House Design

A Thai Architect In Bangkok Is Making Our Retirement House Plans

If you want to contact the very same architectural and construction company I use and recommend, I suggest that you to do so using this contact Form because then you will receive the same personal attention that I did.

Where To Get The Cost Of Building A House In Thailand

This is the post where I tell you how to get an estimate of the cost of building your retirement home in Thailand and you don’t have to go to Thailand to find out.

If you have read the last post Building A Retirement House in Thailand you will know that I promised to give you this information – where to get Thailand house prices.

I have completed the update the drawings I had made of our planned retirement home we want to build in Thailand as mentioned in the previous post. The drawings have been updated now but I still have to upload them to the website.

More importantly, I have sent them to a couple of companies in Thailand to get quotations. One company produces plans (drawings) of Thai houses so I have asked for a quotation to have my outline house drawings fully developed.

Another is a design-and-build company in Thailand who will design and build your house for you. I have asked them for a quotation for producing the drawings and also a budget price for building the house.

You can find all this information including the website addresses of the companies I approached on the Thailand House Prices page.

Building A Retirement House in Thailand

We are more than just planning to build a retirement house in Thailand we are well on with the house plans. You can see some of those on this website at http://retiringinthailand.net/house-build-thailand-2/

Those plans I made myself on AutoCad but did I did start with a basic house design I downloaded from this Thai website:-

http://www.dpt.go.th/download/PW/house_model/framehome.html

The next stage is to obtain budget quotations for my house design before moving to the next stage. I’ll be doing this over the internet and will tell you exactly how when I have been through the process myself.

But before I seek the quotes, there are a few things I need to do to the house drawings to provide more information. (These may well be done when you read this – depends upon what time you came to this post).

Here’s what I’m going to do next to the drawings for of our Thai retirement home:-

• Add to the drawings:-
  • Sink and drain in the Workshop
  • Designate the WC and shower area walls as being made from brick
  • Add a finishes schedule showing what materials and finishes are to be used for walls, floors and ceilings
  • Add the folding windows to the Living room
• Make a cross section though the building
• Add some Thai language notes

So you can see I still have plenty to do before I start to get budget quotations from Thailand for our planned retirement house.

Keep in touch and I’ll update the web page holding the Thai house drawings as soon as I’m ready.